FW: [MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[John Buehler]

Jeff Freeman writes:
>> From: J. Coleman [mailto:stormknight at alltel.net]

>> PS - Just out of curiosity, what do you guys (and gals) consider
>> the more newbie-friendly approach: game that can't be (easily)
>> gamed, and therefore any achievement should mean more to the
>> player, or a game that can be gamed, and therefore any achievement
>> means less, but is much easier to do?

> IMO, "the masses" or "the casual gamers", or whatever you want to
> call them (not necessarily "newbies" or even really *casual* gamers
> really, so much as just "not hardcore gamers"), want an easy game.

> They want tons and tons of content that they can consume with
> relatively little "challenge" (meaning obstacles put in place to
> slow their rate of consumption).  Less "game", more "environment".

I'll disagree with you a bit.  I think that what casual players want
is a small investment into the game experience with a fairly good
return on entertainment.  The more hardcore the player, the greater
the investment that they're willing to make, with the assumption that
they will obtain the greater return on entertainment.  Intertwined
with this is the fact that there is usually a commitment for future
investments by the player.  The greater that perception of committing
to future investments, the more hardcore the player has to be.

The investments made by players are primarily time and energy.
Falling into the category of energy would be emotion, thought, etc.
Raph keeps reminding me that the greatest addictive force in these
games is other players.  And I certainly won't argue that point.  It's
one of the greatest investments that a player can make - relating to
other people.  And the promise of entertainment in return is also one
of the greatest - getting them to relate back.

Your comments about players wanting less challenge and more content to
burn through are accurate, but I don't think they describe the
situation quite accurately.

Given this, the answer to J. Coleman's original question is that
casual players will do whatever they can in order to get entertainment
quickly from a game.  If the game is structured such that 'gaming' the
game is the lowest investment that they can make for good
entertainment return, they'll 'game' the game.  If the game is
structured such that playing the game is the lowest investment that
they can make for good entertainment return, they'll play the game.

Note that I don't believe that the casual gamer to shoot for is the
one who is willing to put zero investment into the game.  That's the
player who wants to watch a movie.  There is a spectrum that leads
from that point up to the hardcore player who wants to spend 10 hours
a day administering their player empire, contending with
administration, military action, and the local economy.  At the high
end, that's a huge investment of time and energy - not to mention a
significant commitment of future time and energy.

The investment notion does not mean that long term objectives are
untenable for casual players.  It only means that the long term
objective has to be entertaining all along the way, and the player
cannot feel obligated to finish what they start.  So if I start my
character along the path of warrior, the game should not be making
plans for my character to be obligated to this or that, else be
penalized in some way.  This rule applies to EverQuest's base pattern
of play: the social structure of the game is predicated on ensuring
that players come back to play some more in the future (commitment)
else they lose their social group (penalty).  The pattern holds from
level 1 all the way to level 60 - a multiyear investment.  That's
fairly hardcore.

One last comment would be that casual gamers vary in their intensity.
Some visits to the game might be for 20 minutes.  Another visit might
be for several hours.  I think a casual game should provide the full
range of commitment options.  For starters, having a game that can
only entail 20 minute tasks would tend to limit the range of
entertainment options pretty severely.  But because one form of
long-term goals can be those composed of smaller, short-term tasks, at
least some kinds of long-term goals can be part of game play.

JB

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